Chicago’s US attorney abruptly dismissed a criminal case Thursday against four anti-ICE activists — including former Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh — after a federal judge called out prosecutors for rigging the grand jury to secure an indictment.
US Attorney Andrew Boutros announced his office was dropping the charges with prejudice after a closed-door hearing before US District Judge April Perry, during which the Joe Biden-appointed jurist said she was “incredibly shocked” by the government’s actions.
Boutros claimed he was unaware of the misconduct, which included a prosecutor meeting with a grand juror outside proceedings and panelists who refused to vote for an indictment being removed from the pool.
The top prosecutor did not dispute the claims, but insisted to Perry that “no one acted with the intent to mislead your honor, and I think that they were following your order to give the law,” according to a transcript of the hearing that was released later Thursday.
The judge was not convinced, saying that “I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing,” but “that trust has been broken.”
Perry went on to suggest she might hold a separate hearing to consider sanctions against Boutros’ office.
Prosecutors initially indicted six activists, including Abughazaleh, in October of last year on charges of having “conspired … to prevent by force, intimidation, and threat” a federal law enforcement officer from carrying out official duties in a manner seeking “to injure him in his person or property.”
Authorities claimed the sextet “physically hindered and impeded” an unidentified officer who was “forced to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators” during a protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in suburban Broadview on Sept. 26, 2025.
Charges against two of the demonstrators had been dropped in March, but a misdemeanor case against the other four was set to go to trial next week, more than two months after Abughazaleh — a left-wing influencer and former employee of liberal watchdog Media Matters for America — was defeated in the Democratic primary to represent the 9th Congressional District.
Boutros’ office had already dropped felony conspiracy charges last month amid questions about the grand jury transcripts.
“The revelations of the grand jury misconduct that led to the dismissal of the charges is sadly not surprising,” said Abughazaleh’s defense attorney Josh Herman, who said he would seek unredacted transcripts of the proceedings. “This misguided case should have never been brought against Kat Abughazaleh or any of her co-defendants for exercising their protected First Amendment rights.”
The others charged were Andre Martin, who was on Abughazaleh’s campaign staff; Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw; and Michael Rabbitt, a Democratic committeeman from Chicago.
With Post wires
